‘Rigor mortis is setting in’… Lennon bemoans stop-start season and is eager for action
0 Neil Lennon: No slip-ups this time.
three or four – because of the wrong footwear, it’s unacceptable in a game as important as that.
“Once they slip over the first time they’re uncomfortable then, and they’re not fully concentrated because they’re worried about slipping over again. It’s just a bugbear of mine. I see a lot of senior players doing it as well, Premier League players doing it and it costs goals, it costs points and it costs big moments. It’s just that little bit of extra preparation for an important game – any game for that matter.”
Horgan agrees that there is no room for slippage as they try to reel in the league leaders, literally or figuratively, charging his colleagues to keep their cool, regardless what is thrown at them by the Hearts players or fans.
Out on the wing, the Irishman, who joined from Preston North End in August, knows he will be in the firing line of the boisterous home supporters, but says the good thing about being new to the country and the league is the fact that he is not fully attuned to the local dialect. “You try not to listen to them,” he said. “Thankfully, the Scottish accent is very thick, so I don’t always know what they are saying but you do understand the tone.”
A derby debutant, watching past games on television means he is aware that the tight Tynecastle pitch poses more problems than the close proximity of the fans.
“Because the pitch is tight everything condenses so much in the midfield and, if you are used to free-flowing football where you can open up and spray passes, it makes things more difficult because every time you get the ball and want to turn, there will be a body coming at you, again and again and again,” he added. “So that will make it difficult. They are used to that. It is their home patch and they have adapted to that, but we will have to get to grips with that very, very early. It will be tricky for us but we will have to adapt to the conditions. It might take us 10-15 minutes to bed in, though, and it might be quite scrappy until the game settles down.”